The Last Namsara

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Asha thought she’d been impervious to their poison effect. Ever since she first started using the stories to summon dragons, she checked—almost obsessively—for signs of detriment: rapid weight loss, unnatural exhaustion, tremors . . . But for as long as she’d been telling the old stories, Asha suffered none of those symptoms. The stories simply didn’t affect her the way they had affected her mother and the raconteurs.

  Maybe it was because Asha and the old stories were made of the same substance. Each’s wickedness canceling the other’s out.

  But maybe she hadn’t paid enough attention. Maybe they had been killing her slowly, all along.

  If I’m dead, I’ll never bring my father Kozu’s head.

  If I’m dead, I’ll never have to bind myself to Jarek.

  They were bittersweet thoughts.

  Asha followed the smoke and ash. The deeper into this cavern she went, the more familiar her surroundings became. It wasn’t that she’d been here before. It was more like she’d been dreaming of this place all her life.

  After years of keeping the stories down, this place unearthed them easily. They surged to her surface, humming and alive, whispering of the First Dragon and the holy Namsaras and the Old One himself. It made her teeth ache to hold them all back.

  Her steps led her to the shadow of a man, crouched behind a small, crackling fire. When he rose, the firelight lit up his face, revealing eyes like black onyx, a bald head, and a gray beard that came to a point just below his chin. A white robe shrouded his body, the hood flipped back.

  The breath flew out of Asha at the sight of him.

  She knew this man. An image of him graced the walls of a room she never should have been in. As a child, she’d heard his name spoken into the dark, always in her mother’s voice.

  “Elorma.” The name was a snarl in her mouth.

  This was the First Namsara. The man who brought the sacred flame out of the desert and founded Firgaard. A messenger of the Old One—who had betrayed them.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.” His velvet voice echoed off the cavern walls. “Come closer.”

  Asha didn’t dare.

  The fire blazed up between them and she lifted her hand to shield her face from its heat. Elorma smiled at her. It made her uneasy. Like the smile of a slave plotting rebellion.

  “As you wish,” he said, plunging his hands into the white-hot flames.

  Asha gasped, sure the fire would eat the skin from his bones. But when his hands emerged, they were unsinged and gripping two shining black blades, curved like half-moons. White fire danced up their edges and went out.

  “Sacred slayers from the Old One.” He held them out to her. “Take them.”

  Asha knew better than to trust him. She knew better than to accept gifts from the Old One. She kept her hands at her sides.

  “I have more weapons than I’ll ever need.”

  “Ah,” he said, “but these were formed just for you, Asha. They’ll settle in your hands like no other. They’ll bend to your will and cut down your enemies faster than any axe.”

  How do you know about my axe?

  But if he knew her name, why shouldn’t he know her weapon of choice?

  “Once you hold them, you’ll want nothing else.”

  Asha thought of how satisfying it would be to kill dragons with weapons like this—quick, sharp, lethal. She shook her head. It was terrible enough telling the stories aloud. But dealing directly with the Old One? That would be much worse. She could imagine the look of horror on her father’s face if he ever found out.

  She took a step back.

  “Are you not called Iskari?” Elorma asked. “It’s an ill-fitted title, in my opinion. Iskari was fearless and fierce. But you are cowering and afraid.”

  Her gaze snapped to his. He looked godlike in the firelight. His skin shone as if with inner light, and his eyes seemed ancient. All-seeing.

  She looked back to the slayers.

  How rewarding would it be to stop Kozu’s heart with weapons like these. How perfect to take the tools the Old One gave her and use them against him. Just like he’d used her against her own people. Her own father.

  We must take great pains to steel ourselves against wickedness, her father told her all those years ago.

  True. But this time, her eyes were wide open. This time, she wouldn’t let herself be used.

  Her father wouldn’t have to know until it was over. Until she’d dropped Kozu’s bloody head at his feet. By then, he would understand. He would praise her for her cleverness.

  Asha reached for the slayers. Elorma smiled a slow smile. As their inlaid hilts slid against her palms, Asha’s blood crackled and sparked. White fire flickered up her arms, sealing an invisible bond. Like a bolt locking into place. He hadn’t lied. They melted into her hands, perfectly balanced, light as air.

  “The gift comes with a command, of course.”

  Asha looked up into grinning white teeth.

  “These slayers can only be used to make wrongs right.”

  “What?”

  Still grinning, he said, “You and I will see each other again soon, Asha.”

  And then he melted into the darkness.

  Asha called after him, but Elorma was already gone. The fire flickered out. The cave was fading fast now, twisting away until the walls of the cavern rushed in to swallow her.

  Asha stood alone in the dark, with stories buzzing in her ears and the hilts of holy weapons gripped hard against her palms and a bad feeling prodding at her ribs.

  What have I done?

  She dropped the sacred slayers into the dirt.

  Six

  Just before dawn, Asha woke to the smell of orange blossoms.

  The night’s chill lingered. Gathering her wool blanket around her, Asha sat up and pushed aside the sheer veils of her canopied bed, squinting through the twilight that cast her room in shades of blue. She scanned the wall opposite, where her favorite weapons hung in neat rows from floor to ceiling. Mostly axes and knives. The occasional hunting dagger. And her wooden wasters—weighted weapons for sparring with Safire.

  There were no curving, night-black blades.

  Asha closed her eyes and exhaled.

  Just a dream.

  Asha held up her bandaged hand. She pulled back the linen to reveal blistered skin. She could still flex her fingers, though the pain of it made her dizzy. If she could flex her fingers, she could wield her axe once the skin healed. And until then, there was always her other hand. Because all that mattered now was finding Kozu as quickly as she could.

  Once she killed him, she wouldn’t have to hide anything anymore.

  “Tell me one thing . . . ,” said a familiar voice.

  Asha’s gaze snapped to the sill of an arching window, where a shadow perched.

  “Why did that dragon breathe fire?”

  Safire jumped down from the sill and shoved aside the sheer veils of the bed. She didn’t bother avoiding Asha’s eyes. Not here, in private.

  “It’s been fifty years since the Severing,” said Safire. “Fifty years since the stories disappeared.”

  Fifty years since the dragons stopped breathing fire.

  Except for Kozu, the First Dragon, who was the wellspring of stories. Who didn’t need one told aloud in order to set a city ablaze.

  Safire grabbed a match from the bedside table and lit the candle there. Instead of answering her cousin, Asha deflected. “Have you been here all night?”

  “I’m asking the questions,” Safire said, turning and grabbing Asha’s wasters from the wall. “Now get dressed. We’re going to the roof.”

  “Saf, I can’t today. My hand . . .”

  She lifted her bandaged hand, realizing as she did that someone had slid off her gloves. Fear jolted through her. Whoever had done it would have seen the bandage.

  Did they see what was beneath it?

  “Do you think Jarek will go easy on you because you have a burned hand?”

  Asha looked to her cous
in. Safire met the Iskari’s gaze. Her eyes blazed in the light of the candle.

  Safire would know what happened. She would know who undressed Asha.

  If Asha sparred with her cousin, she could discover who, exactly, knew about her burn. And then, after determining whether her secret was safe, she could hunt down Kozu.

  Tossing aside the covers, Asha slid out of bed and shivered as her bare feet touched the cold marble tiles. She glared at her cousin as she undid the buttons of her nightdress. It was times like these Asha was grateful she’d dismissed her house slaves years ago. They always trembled in her presence, which made everything take twice as long.

  Holding both wasters in one hand, Safire tapped the ends of them impatiently against her boot. When Asha was fully dressed, they stepped out onto the latticed terrace, where narrow steps led to the rooftop. Below them stretched a garden of dusty date palms, blossoming orange trees, and hibiscuses. It once belonged to Asha’s mother. Date palms always reminded the late dragon queen of her home in the scrublands.

  Asha breathed in the sweet smell.

  But the night was waning, and with it, her time. She had only six days to hunt down Kozu.

  “Let’s get this over with,” she said, taking her waster from Safire and starting up the steps.

  At least her cousin would beat her quickly.

  When Asha wasn’t hunting, sparring was their early morning routine: practice for Safire and helpful for Asha—who was a hunter more than a fighter—to learn how to defend herself. Mainly from Jarek.

  Safire shrugged off her hooded saffron mantle and threw it down to the pebble-laden rooftop. Asha noticed its fraying seams and ragged hem. Her cousin shouldn’t have to wear something so tattered.

  I’ll order a new one from the seamstresses and pretend it’s for me.

  All around them, the rooftops of the palace stood empty. Over Safire’s shoulder, the horizon glowed a hazy gold and the sky shifted from dark blue to purple. With the sunrise came slaves going about their daily chores. These rooftops would be full of activity soon.

  For now, though, there was just Asha and Safire.

  “Why didn’t you tell me the dragons are breathing fire again?”

  Safire swung her waster hard and Asha caught it with her own, the thud of wood on wood vibrating through her.

  Her cousin might be useless in the face of a dragon, but she was far better than Asha at hand-to-hand combat. To survive in a world that preferred she didn’t exist, Safire had to be strong. And she was—her arms were knotted hard with muscles, and beneath the sheer force of her, Asha was buckling.

  “Because . . . you’d worry . . . over nothing,” Asha said through gritted teeth.

  Unable to hold her stance any longer, she ducked away, spinning her wooden waster out of the fall of her cousin’s.

  “It seems I have reason to worry.” Safire recovered, then settled back into her fighting stance. “Considering you fainted in the middle of your father’s court. Don’t tell me it had nothing to do with your burn.”

  Asha’s grip tightened around her waster’s smooth hilt. She’d hoped the fainting was part of the dream. “Did my father see?”

  “Of course he saw.”

  “What did he say?”

  Safire circled Asha, planning her next attack. “Nothing. Jarek did all the talking. Or rather, the screaming—at his slave. Who caught you, by the way. If he hadn’t, they might still be scraping your brains off the tiles.”

  Asha rolled her eyes. It wasn’t that far of a fall.

  Suddenly Safire was there, her waster whistling through the air as she brought it down hard and fast. Asha barely had time to raise her own, barely managed to catch the blow—which still sent her backward.

  “And if I hadn’t convinced the physician you were just dehydrated, he would have insisted on taking a closer look, and then he would have seen that burn.” She nodded toward Asha’s bandaged hand. “So you owe me.”

  Asha lowered her waster.

  Her father didn’t know, then.

  Asha wiped the sweat off her forehead, relieved.

  “Thank you.”

  “Why does it need to be a secret? No one thinks you’re weak, Asha. You’re the Iskari. You killed that dragon. Like hundreds of others before it.”

  But the burn didn’t mean she was weak—at least, not in the way Safire meant. It meant she was corrupted.

  With her cousin’s waster lowered, rendering her vulnerable, Asha saw her moment. She took it, charging.

  Safire’s eyes flashed as she blocked and blocked again. Like lightning.

  The clack of wood on wood cracked in Asha’s ears as she circled, battering her cousin’s defenses, looking for a way in. But Safire was always there, like a door slamming in Asha’s face.

  “And anyway,” said Safire, panting as she blocked, “who would I tell?”

  “Dax. Obviously.”

  Her brother would be horrified to learn his little sister was telling the old stories aloud, preserving the very things that killed their mother. And while Dax and their father weren’t exactly on good terms, out of worry for Asha, he might go to the king.

  Dax couldn’t know. No one could know.

  A gap opened up. Asha took her chance, driving hard at her cousin with her weapon.

  She got nothing more than a swift kick in the shin before the gap closed up again.

  “Arrrugh!” Asha lowered her weapon. “Just once! I wish you’d let me beat you just once. . . .”

  “Wishes.” Safire shook her head. “I wish I knew why the dragons are breathing fire. And why you insist on keeping secrets from me.” She stepped back, surveying Asha, who was walking off the stinging pain in her shin. “And also how your brainless brother could bring those scrublanders home with him.” She rested the tip of her waster in the roof pebbles and leaned on it. “Speaking of Dax, what did you think of his friend? The quiet one.”

  “Roa?” Out of breath, Asha spied the water skin Safire had brought up with them. She made for it. “Jarek interrupted before I could properly form an opinion.”

  While Asha panted and wiped the sweat from her hairline, Safire now stood fresh as the dawn.

  “Did you see what she was wearing?”

  Asha took a long drink of water, then stoppered the skin. “The knife?” Roa had been the only scrublander without a weapon at her hip. But Asha had seen the bulge of a hilt strapped to the girl’s thigh, hidden beneath her dress.

  “No. The pendant.”

  Asha hadn’t noticed any pendant.

  “It was a circle, made out of stone. Alabaster, it looked like.”

  Asha frowned at her. “So?”

  “It seemed like Dax’s handiwork.”

  Aside from his looks, this was the one thing Dax inherited from their father: a love of carving. When their mother was still alive, the dragon king used to carve all kinds of things for her out of bone. Combs, tiny boxes inset with jewels, rings. And Dax, in an effort to make his father proud, taught himself the king’s craft.

  “What are you saying?”

  Safire came to stand before Asha, reaching for the skin. “I’m saying it’s interesting. That girl—Roa—she’s a daughter of the House of Song. Isn’t that the house Dax used to spend his summers in? Before—”

  The words halted on her lips.

  But Asha knew what she’d been about to say.

  Before your mother died and the scrublanders turned against us.

  As a child, Dax was quiet and curious, but also slow to learn things. It took him longer to walk and talk. And when it came to reading and writing, no matter how determined he was or how hard he tried, he couldn’t manage it. His tutors had no patience for him. They convinced the king there was something wrong with his son. Dax was simply unintelligent, they said. A waste of their time.

  So their mother sent Dax to the home of her childhood friend Desta, the mistress of the House of Song. For years, Dax spent summers in the scrublands, learning alongside Desta’s children,
whose tutors were more patient.

  But then their mother died. Peace between Firgaard and the scrublands shattered and the House of Song turned against them. Instead of their honored guest, Dax became a prisoner. Asha didn’t know the whole story, because Dax refused to talk about it. But she knew it was a hurt her brother carried within him to this day.

  “I’m just saying,” said Safire, tilting back her head to drink. “It looked”—she gulped water, then swiped when it dribbled down her chin—“like a token of affection.”

  Those words slammed into Asha like a rockslide in the Rift. “Dax?” she scoffed. “In love with a scrublander?”

  Safire made an arching swoop of her hands, as if to say I’m just telling you what I saw.

  “Even if he did carve her that pendant, you know how he is,” Asha said. “Dax flirts with everyone. It doesn’t mean anything. And Roa seems”—regal, graceful, proud—“like the kind of girl who wouldn’t put up with that.”

  “It’s not Roa I’m worried about.”

  Asha frowned, hearing what Safire didn’t say.

  It was strange that he’d brought the scrublanders back with him. It didn’t seem like something Dax could manage alone. What if he was smitten with Roa? And, if so, what if Roa knew it and was using it to her advantage? Using Dax’s affection to get within striking distance of the king?

  Asha’s heart squeezed at the thought. Because underneath all of her brother’s ridiculous bravado beat a selfless, golden heart.

  The real reason Dax got into the fight with Jarek’s second-in-command? It wasn’t because he was drunk. It was because it was the second-in-command who’d beaten Safire so badly, she could hardly get out of bed for three days.

  Asha’s brother might be a reckless fool. But he was a reckless fool who would do what it took to save the ones he loved from pain.

  She looked to her cousin. “I need you to watch him. Stay close and make sure he doesn’t get himself into trouble.”

  “We can both watch him.”

  But Asha couldn’t. She had a dragon to hunt.

  She walked to the edge of the roof, pacing as she stared out past the city walls to the ridge of the mountain range towering above them. The morning mist gathered in its gray crevices and green valleys. The fading red moon clung to the bit of sky above.